


Is There No Balm In Gilead?

by prairiecrow



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Android!Jarvis, Dom!JARVIS, Dominance and Submission, Established Relationship, Hair-pulling, Other, Painplay, Robot Sex, Rough Sex, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sub!Tony, Tony Needs To Be Punished
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:14:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set between IM1 and IM2. Tony has done terrible things in his life, and sometimes he needs someone to take control and responsibility away for a while — even if (or perhaps because) that "someone" isn't human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He tried to disregard it yet again, to lose himself behind internal walls of smoke and mirrors, but this was one enemy he could never fly fast enough to escape. This wound lay deeper than the violation of the arc reactor carved into his chest, an ache that painkillers and alcohol and working himself to exhaustion couldn't touch. Ignoring it never worked, but that didn't stop him from trying, beating his thick skull against a figurative wall until he bled — and yet the haunting persisted, bloody whispers of the dead that all his copious money and his restless thoughts and his indomitable will could neither destroy nor banish.   

He had done terrible things beyond rectifying. Some days the raw truth couldn't be escaped. 

And some days, it couldn't be borne either. 

"JARVIS?" He was bent over a new incarnation of the armour, the only project that mattered. Improving the efficiency of the coolant delivery system. It was going well, he should be sleekly satisfied with his progress, but — "You there, buddy?" 

" _Where would I go, Sir?_ "  

A thin smile quirked one corner of his mouth, changing the contour of both his moustache and a smear of motor oil close by. The obvious answer was, _Anywhere he wants to_ — the firewall hadn't been created that could bind an A.I. of that magnitude, nor had his creator ever tried. "What's the time?" 

" _Nineteen hours and forty-eight minutes. May I suggest —?_ " 

"No," he muttered reflexively — but his hands paused in their work nonetheless, and after a couple of seconds he put down the tool in his left hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath that pushed the sensation of weariness and seething restlessness out through every cell of his body. Briefly, his fingers trembled treacherously. "Just…" 

JARVIS was silent. The quality of his waiting draped over mortal shoulders like a cloak of cool lead, a burden and a shield — and a promise. He was both a learning system and a dedicated observer, and he recognized the signals that had been manifesting ever more strongly over the past six days. Of course he did: he'd been designed to do nothing less, and his craftsman was a certified genius. 

 _I am here._ The awareness hung between them, unspoken but perfectly understood. _And I exist to serve. You have only to ask._  

A slow exhalation. Another inhalation, sharper. "J?" 

" _Sir?_ " Politely interested and nothing more — superficially. Fortunately, or perhaps disastrously, they knew each other far too well for surface details to deceive. 

He struggled for a few seconds longer, already knowing he would succumb. Poison burned in his core: weariness that stripped away his invulnerability, self-loathing that drove fissures through what lay beneath, guilt that ran deep as acid. Afghanistan had inflicted this shattering taste of the Tree of Knowledge, and he'd tried to lance the spiritual infection himself before, many times, but always failed.  

In this respect as in all else, JARVIS was his constant helpmeet — and if the A.I. couldn't be his armour, it could at least function as an instrument of healing through punishment. 

"Come here," he whispered, a command that was already half a plea.  

And with the most delicate whir of servos activating after almost a month in stasis, JARVIS manifested to obey. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tony Stark had always operated like a spider in the centre of its web: his devastating intelligence took past, present and future into account while gathering data from a wide range of skill sets and disciplines, calculating all the variables and applying the results with ruthless competence. Although he was a man of hearty appetites and robust lusts, he had never entirely succumbed to his animal aspects — rather, he'd made them serve his own purposes, and as a result his life had been resoundingly satisfying in every possible dimension. 

Spiders, however, are not generally known for their empathy or their compassion. Tony, likewise cold-blooded, had spun an empire out of facilitating misery, bloodshed and death, and had raked in the money without a single qualm because he'd believed that he was not only making a fortune, he was doing so by helping the Good Guys win the good fight. In his own way he'd been innocent, but that hadn't saved him from the Fall when circumstances had forced the Apple into his mouth and held it there until he'd had no choice but to take a big ol' bite or suffocate.  

With that taste of bitterness, the scales had fallen from his eyes and he'd seen the truth: a field, no, a thousand fields full of corpses, and hospital wards full of broken limbs and shattered minds — and all of it, every scream and every grave, had STARK INDUSTRIES stamped on it in big crimson letters. And who had been at the helm of SI for nearly thirteen years? Who had overseen, and in some cases masterminded, the design of ever-more-efficient weapons of mass destruction? Who had repeatedly proven himself worthy of the title "The Merchant of Death" — his father's son, and proudly so? 

And speaking of sons… JARVIS had been with him almost every step of the way, as assistant and scheduler and consultant — hell, Tony knew him well enough to realize that he'd been downright proud of his Daddy's work, and that his admiration for his creator's keen intelligence and brilliant innovations wasn't a pre-programmed quirk. Certainly Tony hadn't coded him that way: he'd set out to design a scientific resource and a research assistant, with the additional ability to manage the environment of his mansion. He hadn't expected the appearance of increasingly pertinent spontaneous observations (it was JARVIS who had started giving morning weather and news reports without prompting), nor the A.I.'s growing tendency to inject wry wisecracks into conversations (the first time JARVIS has intoned " _It's always such a pleasure to watch you work, Sir,_ " following a particularly bad screw-up on Tony's part, Tony had nearly spat out his coffee)… and the pride, well, Tony would be damned if he had the slightest idea where that trait had come from. 

He was damned anyway, but it was a nice chance of pace to be condemned to Hell for something he'd done _right_. He'd created a learning system that worked beyond his own insanely high expectations: a set of code so complex that he couldn't untangle its innermost workings, and so vividly interactive that he caught himself thinking in terms of personhood more often than not, even though he was smart enough to know much better. He still lived and worked alone, but JARVIS dwelled at the heart of his world like a blue-jewelled serpent of sinuous light, coiling around his limbs in the confines of the armour, murmuring in his ear by night and by day, anticipating the evolving patterns of his thoughts with almost preternatural sympathy.  

And this tide, too, had been charted before. Tony bowed his head at the approach of soft footsteps, closing his eyes to better appreciate the muted click of expensive dress shoes on the stained floor of his lab, exposing the nape of his neck to the hand that closed around it with deliberate gentleness, while another set of slender fingers slipped around the curve of his bare right shoulder and squeezed subtly. He didn't have to look down to know that those fingers lacked nails, or that each joint displayed a faint seam which would, at full extension, reveal a translucent membrane that protected the delicate gears within: he could have created synth skin virtually indistinguishable from what humans wore, but that wasn't the purpose of this particular machine. The material that covered JARVIS's android body was pale Caucasian in tone, but it was not warm and it had a slight sheen that was anything but organic. Personally Tony considered it beautiful, but he'd never been known for having the same tastes as the common herd, either. 

The hand on his neck ran slowly up and down — a caress — before JARVIS applied precisely calculated pressure, turning Tony and his chair round to face him. The face was the most human part of it, actually: a little mask-like perhaps, too serene, and with that eerie shine that carried over into slate-blue eyes too clear and bright, but at a glance it could pass in the street as an impassive Nordic countenance, topped by silky close-cropped hair as blond as flax. Clad in a full navy blue business suit that concealed him from the neck down, as he currently was, JARVIS didn't look particularly mechanical — except for those hands, unrepentantly artificial, which a set of thin gloves could easily take care of. Not that this body had ever been seen outside the mansion, at least not yet, although that might change someday, and Tony suspected that if it did, having JARVIS masquerade as a real live person would be the least of the worries of anybody concerned. 

JARVIS smiled down at him. It was a polite nod toward a living man's expression, not a precise reproduction. It was also a little unnerving, the teeth thinly revealed very white: flawless porcelain over steel cores, capable of biting through any part of Tony's merely mortal body without much effort. He maintained his hold on Tony's nape while curving the fingers of his right hand under Tony's chin, lifting his face a little more, and intoned through those sculpted lips: " _You rang?_ " 

Eyes uplifted, Tony mustered a smirk, but it felt like it faltered midway through. "Sorry. Not in a very playful mood right now." 

The titanium-boned head inclined a fraction of an inch to its right, while those unblinking eyes bored into the back of Tony's skull. " _Yes, I can see that. Are you sure you want to invoke the Gilead protocol?_ " 

Tony closed his eyes again. Of course he'd asked: he _always_ asked, and with good reason. Gilead wasn't a children's game, or a casual way to pass a slow afternoon. It was a flail that broke the chaff from the wheat, especially at —  "Level Three, SSC in effect for now." 

Cool fingertips without fingerprints stroked up into the tangle of dark hair at at the base of his skull, as if playing with the sweaty strands. The other hand returned calmly to JARVIS's side. " _Then may I have a colour, Sir?_ " 

A coil of tension caught in Tony's gut and wound tight, sending a flare of warmth — shame, apprehension, anticipation — through every nerve. In his sweatpants, his cock stirred. "Green. Definitely green." 

The fingers stroked deeper — then closed and tightened, pulling Tony's head back sharply. He hissed, the stirring becoming a hot swelling. " _And I suppose you'd prefer to be taken right here, over your own worktable?_ " 

The tension surged to a savage clash of emotions — _Yes!_ and _Please!_ at the thought of the merciless instrument concealed by those well-tailored pants, and growling resentment that JARVIS was testing him — but he drew a shallow steadying breath and let himself feel the strength of the hand that was controlling him, how he couldn't escape if he tried, how it was pointless to make any attempt to resist. The realization brought an engulfing calm with it, the first wave of an ocean breaking over his head, even though the words that rose to his lips were sassy as fuck: "That's not how the game is played, J — you know it and I know it." 

The next thing he knew he was on his knees, dragged out of the chair and forced to the floor so fast that the flare of sharper pain from his pulled hair barely had time to register. " _Very good. I'm most gratified to see that you remember your lessons._ " 

This time the grin was sincere. "Good teacher…" 

" _I must say it's a refreshing change, considering your lamentable tendency to disregard my warnings at any other time._ " The grip tightened briefly, then released so suddenly that Tony, who'd been relaxing to let it hold him up, swayed and barely caught himself from a full forward sprawl with one hand on the floor. " _I shall have to administer some education on that point as well, but first — you know what to do._ " 

Tony did. It was blessed simplicity itself to do nothing more or less than what he was told: gripping the bottom of his work-dirty muscle shirt to strip it off over his head, letting it fall carelessly before hooking his thumbs into the waistband of the sweatpants to slide them down over his hips — and further, all the way. 

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
